Central universities’ common entrance will not happen in 2021

Instead the Central University Common Entrance Test (CUCET) will happen from 2022-23 academic year, UGC said Sunday though an internal panel of the government had recommended conducting CUCET from 2021 itself as it will reduce hassles for students and provide a common pool of students to choose from.

“In view of prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, admission process in Central Universities during Acad Session 2021-22, may continue as per past practice. Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) may be implemented from Acad (Academic) Session 2022-23,” the UGC said.

It means, each of the central varsities will conduct their admission process independently depending on the covid-19 ground realities.

A government panel of vice-chancellors had submitted its report in April, supporting a common entrance exam for undergraduate courses, and a similar process for postgraduate courses at the more than 40 central universities. The proposed entrance was supposed to judge the aptitude and domain knowledge beyond multiple choice type of evaluation.

As per the recommendations, central universities were to admit students by giving 50% weightage to the performance in school board exams, and the rest in a national entrance to be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

For ironing out the qualitative issues related to different school boards, the NTA was supposed to rationalize the state school boards marks, the government panels had recommended. To broad base the testing outcome, it has suggested that the national entrance will test domain knowledge as well as common aptitude, verbal ability and quantitative reasoning.